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I recently bought a new pcut and have it connected to my laptop via a USB.  I am using signblazer...long story short, I can not get the computer and cutter to communicate.  I even tried hooking it up to another computer..and no go.

any help would be appreciated

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my best and only advice to u is to connect using serial cable and u will be good to go. i tried the laptop thing when i first got my pcut stayed up all night. the next morning connected with the serial cable and have been cutting every since.

good luck :thumbsup:

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Which COM port # has Windows assigned to your USB connection? Have you told SignBlazer the correct COM # to use?

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I am not an expert at this but mine worked perfect right out of the box with laptop and USB cable. I just followed the directions.

Turn on your Pcut, then connect USB to laptop, then turn on laptop. Your laptop should see new hardware then install the driver from the CD.

Once done go into your control panel, then system, then hardware, then device manager, and expand COM Port and if you only have on thing hooked up to USB and COM like I do it will be the only thing in the list.

Then in signblazer click on cutter then setup and choose that port from the drop down. Mine happens to be on COM4 and I am running windows XP.

I have attached a capture of the location of the COM PORT look up and of where you choose it in signblazer.

Good  Luck,

Shawn

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post-2523-12986520657835_thumb.jpg

post-2523-12986520658147_thumb.jpg

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hey guys my pcut 630 has only a serial input, now how are you getting from usb to serial, they are nolonger making cpu s with serial, so all the people with satalites that use this port are out of luck as well, I was in best buy to buy my new desk top and the salesman said that a converter could be used but he said that alot of information is lost this way and is not always gonna work, My desk top and laptop are both brand new and both are HP. do you guys have usb ports on your p-cuts, if you can suggest please do. thank you

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On the right side of mine, looking from the front there is a serial and a USB port side by side. The USB looks like a square with the top 2 corners cut off at a 4 degree angle. Let me know if you want me to take a photo so you can see how mine looks.

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yes i would like to see your picture, maybe i have an older model, which i think is impossible, but i will let you know after i see yours, i may be stuck buying a new cutter

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thanks, my plotter is different, although it has the same shape in regards to the plug in area, i only have the 25 pin end of the serial, as yours has the 11 pin and the usb. somehow i guess mine is older. :thumbsup:

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thanks, my plotter is different, although it has the same shape in regards to the plug in area, i only have the 25 pin end of the serial, as yours has the 11 pin and the usb. somehow i guess mine is older. :thumbsup:

25-pins is standard for parallel. Does your have a parallel interface?

Anyway, as suggested above, connect via serial. To do so you can purchase a Serial to USB adapter, it's called a Keyspan. You can usually find them at your local computer store, radio shack or you buy them cheap from eBay.

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On 6/17/2008 at 9:05 PM, nonabelle said:

my best and only advice to u is to connect using serial cable and u will be good to go. i tried the laptop thing when i first got my pcut stayed up all night. the next morning connected with the serial cable and have been cutting every since.

good luck :thumbsup:

Do you need drivers for serial cable? I have also been trying with a laptop and USB cable for days but no success. Today I want to try a desktop with a serial cable. Any advise on how to go about it?

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If your desktop has a built in serial port then all you need to do is configure it and the software to what the cutter is expecting and you should be good to go.

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Hey friends, I am here with an update after asking several questions, some of them not very sensible on my Pcut CT 1200. I guess I was asking some of those questions out of ignorance and panic. I had invested everything in the new cutter and for it not to work was a big thing for me. I was thinking my cutter won't work again after trying everything to no avail. Thanks for your patience in answering all my questions. I am here to announce that my cutter did finally work! I got a serial cable as suggested by one member here. It connected but still couldn't cut. The magic was the baud rate. The manual says it should be 9600. I was not able to see the baud rate on the cutter and it was a big headache. Someone on a Facebook forum suggested I use 34600. I checked on the options both on the device manager (serial com port) and SignBlazer, I didn't have them. I had the next highest, 38400. I tried it and boom! it was cutting. I haven't had issues since then. I am now just trying different things to perfect my art in this new field. Once again, thanks for your help. 

However I have not been able to figure out how to import into SignBlazer no matter how many times I have tried. So far I am able to cut things that I design directly on it. Any suggestions are welcome.

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Glad you managed to get your cutter working. It's strange that the 9600 baud rate didn't work. Main thing is that you found a way to make it work.

As far as importing - what version of SBE are you using? what have you tried, and what's happening? Do you get an error? Does nothing happen? Do you have an sample file that you wouldn't mind sharing so others can see if it can be imported?

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For whatever reason, my SC2  has issues: When I send to cut, the ENTIRE file must first be loaded into cutter memory, and then, and only then, will the machine begin the cut. I know this is not the way it's supposed to work, but something is glitched in the circuitry, and I can live with it. Because of this, I wanted the transfer of data to go as fast as possible, so I upped the baud to 256,000 (fastest) and the tracing of the cutfile goes like gangbusters -- the blue line zooms! After the trace (path) is completed, the cutting head starts moving.

While this actually has nothing to do with the Derek and his Pcut, I just thought it was worth mentioning, as a matter of conversation.

P.S. -- SignBlazer will not import .eps files that were created with Illustrator past version 8.
That is a well-known limitation for the SBE abandonware program.

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On 10/5/2008 at 2:49 PM, lucciano said:

thanks, my plotter is different, although it has the same shape in regards to the plug in area, i only have the 25 pin end of the serial, as yours has the 11 pin and the usb. somehow i guess mine is older. :thumbsup:

Its a 9 pin holder buddy RS232 serial port

 

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On 6/18/2008 at 4:49 AM, palladinographics said:

I recently bought a new pcut and have it connected to my laptop via a USB.  I am using signblazer...long story short, I can not get the computer and cutter to communicate.  I even tried hooking it up to another computer..and no go.

any help would be appreciated

As everyone suggested, go for a serial cable, a 9 pin RS232 adapter. If yours is a red and black CT 630 it would be on the same side otherwise it may be on opposite side to each other. But definitely, USB ports are not reliable. Not only they create problems in communication, but from my experience, they cause the machines to go random during cutting thereby ruining the vinyl many a times.

My cutter came in with a brief set of instructions and while setting it up, I was stumbled by Three main things:

1. USB and serial port cables (I am using serial port cable and have had no issues since then)

2. Baud Rate: The value you get on the cutter screen and the value you set in the cutting manager section of your cutting software has to match

3. COM port. Try fiddling around with the different COM ports on the computer and the cutter's production manager.

 

Lastly, try hooking a low memory Desktop to the cutter rather than a laptop so it can stay comfortably connected to the cutter

 

Good Luck

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